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From the archives: Jefferson Davis and family found refuge in Montreal

Portraits taken in Montreal of Jefferson Davis (President of the Confederacy, 1861-65) and his wife, Varina (1867); the Davis children (also in 1867); and Davis's mother-in-law, Margaret Louisa Howell (1865). Margaret Louisa Howell died in Nov. 1867 and is buried in Mount Royal Cemetery. Composite: William Notman (1826-1891) / McCord Museum

This story was first published on Nov. 27, 2005, in the Montreal Gazette.

“The historical role of Canada, and particularly Montreal, in the American Civil War struggle came to light again yesterday in a unique graveside ceremony on the slopes of Mount Royal.”

The Gazette, Wednesday, Nov. 25, 1959

Scarcely a dozen people gathered at the graveside that overcast November day. Their odd mission was to dedicate a stone over the remains of a woman who had been buried there almost a century before. Yet though she had been prominent in her own day, her grave until then had been quite anonymous.

She was Margaret Louisa Howell whose daughter Varina was the wife of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America. A cultivated, witty woman known in the Davis family as Ma, it was she more than anyone who held that family together after the Confederacy had fallen apart.

With the Civil War just over, much of the South was devastated and Davis was in prison in Virginia, with little to look forward to but a trial for treason. Ma and the family, though scarcely to be considered criminals themselves, knew life in the United States would not be easy for them. For a time at least, they needed a refuge – but where?

Throughout the war, many Canadians were sympathetic to the South, not so much because they supported slavery but out of fears that an eventually victorious Northern army might then turn its guns toward this country. Montreal in particular was a haven for Southern refugees, as well as a base for Southern agents scheming against the Union.

So Montreal it would be. Ma, Varina and three Davis children arrived here in August 1865.

They were fortunate in being introduced to John Lovell, the prominent printer and publisher, and his wife, Sarah. The Lovells befriended the refugees and soon invited them to share their home on Ste. Catherine St., where the Bay now stands.

Meanwhile, Jefferson Davis languished in prison. His cell was open to the elements, for a time he was manacled, and his health – and his morale with it – began to fail.

Released on bail in the spring on 1867, he immediately left for Montreal to join his family. He arrived here on May 21, emaciated and almost unrecognizable.

Occasionally, his spirits seemed to lift a little. When he went to Toronto for a short visit several weeks later, he was gratified when 7,000 people cheered themselves silly as his steamer docked at the foot of Yonge St.

And in July in Montreal, when he attended a play being staged for the Southern Relief Association, the cheers of the Theatre Royal audience and repeated choruses of Dixie held up the show for half an hour.

A man seated close to Davis that evening later wrote, “His hair and beard are fast turning white. His face was haggard and care-worn, while his entire looks and demeanor showed an old and broken down man. Not even the wild cheering of the crowd moved him to smiles, and it was not until the play drew towards its close that his face showed a pleasurable emotion.”

People were a trial to him, the noisy bustle of the city a torment. Fortunately, Ma was able to rent the house of Rev. Henry Wilkes, a Congregationalist minister away on an extended trip to England. The house was on Mountain St., then at the almost rural western extremity of the city, and there Davis found a measure of peace. Ma’s quiet, intelligent conversation was also a comfort.

As the weather started to turn that autumn, Davis’s doctor advised him to return to the South, lest his health suffer further. It was not a happy return.

In Mississippi, not only did he find his two plantations in ruins but shortly afterward he was ordered north to Richmond, Virginia’s capital, to face trial.

Then came what might have been the most shattering turn of all. He received word that Ma was dead.

No one thought her health to be fragile like her son-in-law’s. When she had proposed visiting an old friend who was then in Bennington, Vt., no alarm bells went off.

Nonetheless, Ma fell ill in Bennington. Varina rushed there to bring her mother back to Montreal and, once again under the roof of the Lovells, she died on Nov. 24.

Davis was not allowed to leave Richmond, and by the time the charges against him were dropped, Ma had long been in her grave.

Her funeral was held at Christ Church Cathedral. But the Davis family was destitute, and their Montreal friends somehow failed to step in, so there was no proper stone to mark her grave in Mount Royal Cemetery.

It was left to a Lennoxville lawyer, B.N. Holtham, to remedy things many years later. He had become interested in the story, in part because the Davis family had lived in Lennoxville for a time before moving to Mountain St. and again after Ma’s death.

He got in touch with several Davis descendants, money was provided for a monument and the next anniversary of Ma’s death, in 1959, was set for its dedication.

Holtham tried to buy a Confederate flag to drape over Ma’s grave at the ceremony, but was unable to find one. He was left to make one himself.

A great-granddaughter of Jefferson Davis was to attend, but while travelling from her home in Santa Barbara, Calif., she fell ill and could not make it. Like her great-great-grandmother 92 years before, she was in Vermont at the time. Unlike Ma, happily, she was to recover.

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